Remember, the unreached are people groups among whom there is no indigenous community of believing Christians able to engage the people group with church planting. Technically, less than 2% of the people in these groups are evangelical Christians.

Our best estimate is that out of over 11,000 distinct people groups, over 6,500 people groups are unreached. And just to make sure we feel the weight of that number, 6,500 people groups includes at least 2 billion individual people. So in a world of 7 billion people, at least 2 billion of them are unreached—2 billion people who have still not been reached with the gospel of Christ.

While we’re defining terms, here’s one more: unengaged. Over 3,000 of these 6,500 people groups are also unengaged, meaning there is currently no evangelical church planting strategy underway to reach that specific people group. (We refer to them as Unengaged, Unreached People Groups, or UUPGs.) Those 3,000 unengaged people groups include around 200 million individual people.

In many cases (not in all, but many), these are smaller people groups, but they still have distinct ethnicity and many times a distinct language. Some of these people groups have still had no contact whatsoever with the outside world. They live in total isolation.

It’s overwhelming to think that, right now, there are at least 3,000 people groups (many of which are smaller ethnic groups), that have no one specifically trying to reach them with the gospel. There’s only one thing worse than being lost—that’s being lost and having no one try to find you.

Pray for church leaders in reached contexts to lead their congregations in such a way that reaching and engaging the unreached is a priority.

Pray that God would raise up individuals, families, and churches to selflessly and sacrificially engage the unreached.

* If you missed the previous post answering the question, "Who are the unreached?", you can read it here.